The Oracle of Apollo
Snippets from the life of Apollo Lee

On Friday, I scrambled around looking for the charger for my Palm Tungsten E2 and, after looking for it for hours, I gave up.

In the middle of the day on Monday, I called Palm’s technical support line and talked to someone who decided to send me a replacement charging cable. Today, the cable came. I plugged my trusty Tungsten into the US adaptor and nothing happened. I did a soft reset and the unit charged up.

So, instead of a replacement cable, the nice person at Palm shipped me an international charging cable with four different connectors. Next time I travel overseas, I have already sorted out powering up my PDA.

Thanks, Palm!

Firefox 1.5 is out. Other than reinstalling all my extensions (Web Developer, Sage, and del.icio.us), I haven’t noticed much different. I have noticed that Plastikfox Crystal SVG, my favorite theme, isn’t available for the new browser yet.

All my extensions work correctly and as I have more of a chance to play with it, I’ll probably notice more of the enhancements. I guess when I get to work tomorrow, I’ll see if IE Tab works on my Windows box at work.

Congratulations on the new browser, Mozilla. CSS3 support! Now, let’s see what Redmond has to say about that.

It had been a while since I’d gone out to Mighty and I felt pretty healthy. I was a little antsy after last night’s party to get onto a good dancefloor with a good crowd. Patrick and Gigi were into it, so after a short disco nap, I jumped in my car and zipped up to San Francisco.

Tonight’s party was House of Om, featuring DJ Fluid and Fred Everything. DJ Fluid was on the decks when I arrived and threw down a solid set of deep, funky house grooves. What a magnificent breath of fresh air. He kept a delicious set going until after midnight, when Fred Everything took over. Fred’s set was soulful, inspiring, grin-inducing, stellar. That’s what I’ve been missing. The venue was full, but not packed, and the crowd was fun to dance with.

The only bummer about the party is that the girl who had the Om CDs for sale split before 3. I was looking forward to buying some new disks. Ah, well, I guess I can always buy them off Om’s site or on Amazon.

What a great party!

I noticed an announcement from a friend on myspace. Tonight, a free party in San José featured Roger Moorehouse and Frank Zacarias, a couple of South Bay DJs, so I decided to check it out. I haven’t been out in more than a month and I figured that I could go, hang out, and listen to some good music.

The bar was mellow, had a decent sound system, and kind of a sparse crowd. I ran into a couple of people I know through UNEAQ and hung out. Roger and Frank played solid Latin-influenced house mixes, interspersed with more commercial fare (it was in San José, after all). Toward the end, a few people jumped onto the dancefloor.

The music ended at 1:30 and I made a bee-line back to my jalopy and headed home. Not a bad club, but it was quite sparse and of the crowd there, something like 90% were male. Maybe another time.

After I got unbanded this morning, I called CHP to see about picking up my bicycle. They said it wouldn’t be a problem, so I zipped up to Redwood City to get my 520 this afternoon.

I haven’t seen my bicycle since the crash. From what I could see, I had tacoed my front wheel (a 36-spoke touring wheel), bent my handlebars out of alignment with my fork, and bent my brake assemblies inward. The front fender was a little bent up (although it’s mostly thin plastic and aluminum, so it doesn’t need replaced). My saddle was a little scuffed (from the flip) and I broke my large Polar water bottle. I loaded my beautiful ride onto my bike rack, tossed the bent from rim into the back seat of my car, and made the trip to Bicycle Outfitter. They’re going to check my bike from top to bottom. My 520 is in the best of hands.

Some time next week, my bike will be fixed (and endowed with new handlebar tape which I bought five or six months ago — the really nice gel pad Fizik tape) and I’ll be able to start rebuilding all that lost muscle.

Cyclists, do miles on the trainer count as miles in your training log? I guess I’ll see how I feel on asphalt and then determine whether I need to get that trainer in order to ride, or not.

Finally, though, my bicycle and I are back in the same county.

Yesterday, a large piece of the wax separating my molars to pull my jaw back into place broke off into my mouth. After some effort, I managed to open my banded jaw just enough to push it out through my teeth with my tongue. So, I called my surgeon’s medical assistant, she consulted him, and this morning at 9 am, I returned to the clinic at Stanford.

My surgeon cut the myriad rubber bands which banded my jaws shut and prevented me from opening my mouth. Then, he removed all the wax in my mouth. Opening my yap felt really strange, as does the fact that my tongue can feel my actual molars again. After installing a pair of new rubber bands on each side, he told me to do some range-of-motion exercises.

My friends, I have graduated from liquids to soft foods. My diet can now include ice cream, pudding, soups of various kinds, and blended angel hair pasta (the blender chews it up into little tiny chunks for me), among other things. I don’t have to eat things with my 60cc syringe anymore. I have graduated to spoons.

I get to spend at least two more weeks without solid food. But, I did ask my surgeon if I could exercise…

“Don’t fall. Probably better to ride a trainer. But, when you get your heart rate up, it’s going to feel uncomfortable because your fractures are still healing, so just be careful.”

So, perhaps, a week from tomorrow, I’ll ramble 20 miles up and down Foothill Expressway and see how it feels. If it doesn’t hurt, it looks like I may end up with a non-zero November cycling chart after all. We’ll see. Better to have that big goose egg than mess up my body.

I guess next, I’d better see about checking on my valiant steed.

On Tuesday, my appointment for my surgery finally came. One of my housemates drove me to Stanford University and I headed up to the surgery check-in. On check-in, I was informed that my surgeons were running long on another surgery.

I got naked, robed, and weighed (I’m down ten pounds already?), and waited for my anesthesiologist to talk to me. Apparently, my surgery has changed. Surgical reduction of my mandibular condyles is too risky, so we’re plating my chin fracture with a metal plate and banding my jaws shut for a couple of weeks. My surgeon is placing the plate by making an incision inside my mouth. I end up with no external incisions.

The anesthesiologist told me they were going to intubate me nasally—a big tube down my nose and throat. Fortunately, I’d be out before they did that. They started the IVs and I was shortly wheeled into the operating room. A gaggle of people were buzzing around me and the anesthesiologists worked on my veins. Soon, someone asked me if I was too cold.

It seemed like five seconds elapsed when I opened my eyes. “Are we starting?” I asked. “Honey,” the nurse told me. “You’re all done. You’ve been in the recovery room for more than an hour.” My vision returned and, before long, I ended up in my room, groggy, but alive.

I spent five hours the first night trying to go to the bathroom, before the prettiest nurse in the world came in to install a catheter. That sucked a little bit. Also, if you’re up all night and plan to sleep through the day in the hospital… forget it. People come in bright and early to make sure that you don’t sleep very much.

Wednesday passed and my doctor decided that I should spend an additional night in the hospital, just to make sure I was out of pain and in full possession of my faculties by the time I go home. So, after five clear liquid meals, I was finally given a can of Ensure and released a little while afterward.

My friend, Emmett, grabbed supplies I requested at my house on Wednesday and came to pick me up on Thursday morning. So far as I’m concerned, Emmett doesn’t get to buy Indian food in my presence for a year—it’s on me, sir.

So, I have another week from today with my jaws banded shut. Next Monday, I get to go in and get my mouth opened and guidance bands placed. After that point, for a couple of weeks, I’ll be on a soft foods diet. After that, I will likely be able to resume with solid foods ad nauseam (heh). At that point, I hope to be back on my bicycle with a whole new level of commitment. If I’m gonna lose all this weight to liquid diets and a jaw injury, I’m coming back stronger than ever before.

Tomorrow, I’m going to Stanford for my surgery at 10 in the morning.

I’ll be under the knife for most of Tuesday afternoon.

I have a confession to make… I’m scared shitless. Shitless.

I’ve never had major surgery before. I’m confident that the surgeon in charge of my care is the best of the best of the best. I’m afraid of the recovery.

When Emmett drove me home from the hospital last Sunday, I got car sick for the first time ever. At least that I can remember. We made it all the way to Sunnyvale on I-280 and when we got to Walgreen’s, I just couldn’t ride in the car anymore. I’m scared of getting sick without the ability to open my mouth.

I have an exceptionally high constitution, but I’m a little afraid of the hospital stay, the inevitable IV and catheterization, and the risk of complications. I’m a little afraid of the pain of recovery. It’s like watching the hurricane coming in. Tomorrow, it makes land fall.

Have you had major surgery? Am I terrified for nothing? I’m not going to skip out on it, but I’m still trembly scared.